Azure Files Review
Posted by garyrobk@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 26 comments
I’ve been in the process of migrating compatible departments into SharePoint for the better part of two years.
But as we all know, SharePoint isn’t a file server and there are some departments that just can’t function well in SharePoint.
I’m looking at various options for our marketing department specifically who rely HEAVILY on mapped drive letters for hundreds of linked adobe images. Azure Files sticks out the most because we’re a full Microsoft house, but I’m having a hard time getting a handle on the pricing, reliability, and speed.
There’s <2TB of data from our file server that won’t function in SharePoint and probably \~30 people interacting with that data daily.
How has your experience been with Azure Files? How has the cost compared to other services? Have you found it to be as responsive as a traditional file server (lower end Xeon chips and mechanical harddrives)?
chandleya@reddit
I’m running 135TB in Azure Files today. AMA.
HDClown@reddit
Do you have users run exclusively out of Azure Files or do you do File Sync to local servers with some access being off those local servers?
If do any sync to local, do you have any instances of the same data being sync'd to multiple servers in different locations? If so, how do you deal with the lack of global filing locking?
chandleya@reddit
No file sync. Defeats a lot of the point of moving things to cloud if I string it right back onprem.
Professor-Potato281@reddit
I’m currently in the process of migrating from a on prem file server. The bulk of our data is 2d cad drawings. And azure files will act as our back end storage for our work flow engine that we are in the process of building. Any thing that we should be looking out for here?
How is performance across regions? We are expanding across the US and have a few handful of users in India and Philippines, that we are hoping to boost their performance with this as well, cache server a good idea here?
NagorgTX@reddit
You can't escape the physics of latency over increased distance. This is where having a local file server acting as a local cache (As part of a Sync Service group) comes in handy. But this also comes with its caveats; sync conflicts, on-prem manage overhead etc..
Best advice is to test out your scenario for user acceptance going directly to the Azure File Share private endpoint. It may be just fine for most things.
Toinopt@reddit
I'm in the exact same position as you, we currently have a on prem server plus Nextcloud (also synced to the on prem) to sync when people are at jobsites outside of the main office, most of them, nextcloud alone has close to 3tb of project files, mainly cad drawings like DWG and documents but also photos and videos.
We have people a bit all over the world and Management wants us to move everything from the on prem servers to sharepoint by next week... we are talking of close to 5TB of data of mainly documents and said project files.
From the quick research the Azure files looks like it's what makes the most sense but it looks expensive and I have no idea how the performance will be and the syncing work for the big files we have.
Permissions is even worse.
If you figure it out be sure to reply.
chandleya@reddit
Use the costs for Azure Files Provisioned V2. If you aren't running file access local (in the cloud, cloud to cloud, using an Azure resource) there's almost no reason to pay for SSD. Azure Files Provisioned V2 can have a lower TCO than cool blob storage.
chandleya@reddit
That's a specific case that I dont share - I'm not in the Asian regions. However, i believe generally speaking, Azure has a few orders of magnitude more bandwidth between regions than you have the potential to consume it!
As for end user experience, you're talking about SMB across the internet. Even wtih QUIC and other tricks, the protocol itself wasn't written for latency and many hops. End user experience will then depend on the user workflow. Pull a few 100s of MB files to local, do things, send them back? Not bad at all, especially if you teach them to use bookmarks/pins/favorites for general paths to reduce enumeration(s) when browsing. Conversely, browse for a bunch of 500kb files in various thick folders? Not a great experience.
And that's not Azure Files specific. If you stood up a SAMBA server in at VPS somewhere and did the same thing, you'd have a similar response.
schporto@reddit
Macs. I just need a way to mount azure files directly using user creds (not the storage key) so I can drop the caching sync servers. The sync servers cause some additional costs as all files are listed every 24 hours to validate any changes.
Frothyleet@reddit
I don't know if it's GA yet but I think they are introducing Entra ID authentication for Azure Files (which frankly should have been there from the jump).
fixitben@reddit
Are you just trying to move from on premise to the cloud? Look into Nasuni. You can have your golden copy in azure but on premise speed.
Most_Incident_9223@reddit
Looking at Nasuni too - are you using it?
fixitben@reddit
We have been using it for about 5-6 years and it’s great.
Raptorhigh@reddit
Azure Files is rock solid, but you may want to check out Azure File Sync. You can remove some of the performance issues associated with Azure files by having a cache server on prem. I’d consider it pretty easy to setup. From a DR perspective, you can throwaway the caching server without a major loss.
sambodia85@reddit
And there is no migration process. You can leave your exisiting file share right where it is and it will upload files in the background.
Then after the initial upload you can turn on the teiring, and you file server is now a caching server, with no user changes or outages.
It’s very elegant.
thegarr@reddit
Azure files works well for general file share/smb storage. But beware latency on small file read/write performance. It's not a good fit for latency-sensitive apps that need a shared drive to store and work with app data.
Try applying NTFS permissions to a 2TB share of documents and you'll see what I mean. Better to spin up an azure server vm with a dedicated drive in those situations.
Toinopt@reddit
What about the sync, does it work well for big files or a bunch of small files?
RegularOk1820@reddit
SharePoint is absolutely not a file server and I will die on that hill. Azure Files worked better for us but pricing gets annoying once people stop deleting junk.
chesser45@reddit
Ugh all I want that it doesn’t have is native QUIC without needing a server to do it.
ryryrpm@reddit
Have you heard of Nasuni? They use your Azure blob storage to make file shares for you which is cheaper than Azure Files apparently. We had some chats and demos with them a while back and it seemed pretty cool. Ultimately we decided not to purchase because we wanted to see what we could migrate to SharePoint first. Still in the process of doing that.
canadian_sysadmin@reddit
We found it to be pretty slow.
However, it's got a great sync agent, so we ended up using it syncing to on-prem servers - that was rock solid.
Accessing files directly, I'm not really convinced personally. I also figure if you're going to have traditional file shares, might as well put them on traditional servers or appliances. Not sure what value-add there is in Azure Files on its own (as a file server replacement).
Master-IT-All@reddit
I have deployed Azure Files for a customer with about 5TB of data. Still in the process of migration.
In our setup I have configured Azure Files, restricted to internal private, and then setup an Azure file cache server on prem.
So to the end users it just looks like the same share but on a different server. GPP mapped drives.
The users don't actually work from Azure Files, unless we're in a BCDR situation and the work is all in Azure via remote desktop on AVD or Terminal services. Part of the setup of DR is that there is also DFSN in front so the same UNC path can resolve to the Azure Files private end point in the case of DR.
\\domain.com\DFSNroot\Finance points to \\server-azfc\Finance and the UNC path to azure files (I can't recall it).
Another aspect I like is that the same permissions apply from the same groups as they do in Active Directory using synced universal security groups.
The most important thing about cost is that it is based on the PROVISIONED storage, not used, provisioned. So when creating shares its not just make them all 1TB, you will want to examine the used space and provision the smallest volume possible. So I have a lot of 32GB shares.
It's not super cheap that is for certain, but it's working very well and in the budget the customer requested. Approximate cost seems about $1000 CAD per TB per month if I were guessing.
chandleya@reddit
Have a look at azure files provisioned v2. It IS super cheap.
uninspired@reddit
It's been a few years, but when we initially tried it there wasn't any way to do a standard user mapping like you're used to with an "old school" on-prem windows file server. We ended up spinning up a VM and mounting the Azure Files volumes and then sharing out as standard SMB shares. It felt too much like we were trying to recreate days gone by and we ended up scrapping it.
chandleya@reddit
The only old incompatibility was lack of ADDS auth. That was solved about 4 years ago.
jasped@reddit
Following. Also looking at AF as an alternate for SharePoint for potential future. I’ve been able to get SharePoint working well by archiving old stuff and limiting site size.